Is it still snowy up there?
The presence or absence of snow plays a huge role when in alpine rock climbing. Do you need crampons, micro-spikes, or an ice axe? Is that talus field filled in enough to walk over, or are you going to post hole through and gash your shin open on a rock? Is there water available to filter, or do you need to bring your own? Knowing about the snow situation helps you make decisions about all these factors.
So how do you find out?
The tried and true method is to ask someone for a first-hand account. Many popular areas have condition threads on Mountain Project that are updated throughout the season. Other times, you may have to find a message board where you can pose the question for the hive mind to answer. You can even turn to the peak baggers, hikers who tend to share a very detailed account of their summits with one another. Baring that, I’ll look at the Mountain Project ticks of popular routes and send personal messages to people who’ve actually been up there recently. Of course, all of these methods only work if someone has actually done it already and is willing to share the information with you or the community at large.
What if you can’t find someone who’s done it yet?
If all your leads have gone cold, then you’re on your own. Of course you could try scouting the area from other accessible zones; I look up at Lone Peak Cirque every time I drive by it on I-15. While it doesn’t give me a perfect picture of what’s going on up there, I can form a rough idea of the snowpack. My eyes aren’t nearly as good as a bird’s, nor can I achieve the ideal vantage point directly above my objective. Luckily, we live in the 21st century. There are literally thousands of satellites orbiting Earth. Some of these take pictures. A collection of them shares those photos with the world, all for free.
The Copernicus Programme
TL;DR: The European Union has satellites (named Sentinel-n) that continually take pictures of Earth and collect other information. They give the data to everyone for free. You can use this to see if there’s snow in remote places you want to rock climb. Thanks, EU!
Lone Peak, Utah seen using data from Sentinel-2 . Data from June 5th and July 5th, 2024.
Since data from The Copernicus Program is available for free for everyone, there are many applications to use it. One of my favorite options is the Copernicus Browser.
Select your location
Choose a date. Obviously, more recent data is better, but clouds can cover the location you wish to observe. You can filter data based on max cloud cover and select a date more likely to be free of clouds.
Pick a layer. The default layer works just fine, but the “Highlight Optimized Natural Color” also works well.
CalTopo, my preferred mapping software and app, also offers an overlay using Sentinel data. I’m not exactly sure how this works since it handles things on the backend, but CalTopo appears to show data from the selected week with minimal cloud cover, stitching together multiple days in order to give a seamless experience and integration onto your existing maps, routes, and pins. I prefer the “False Color Green” option since it makes the snow really pop out on the map (appearing teal). The overlay is a pro feature, so it’s only available with a paid subscription. Side note: CalTopo just released a “heading as up” version of the app, so it now can orient the map in the direction your facing. If you’ve been reluctant to try out CalTopo because it was lacking this feature, give it another try!
Lone Peak seen with Sentinel data from week of July 11th, 2024 using CalTopo with False Green Color option. Teal is snow.
